Joker Star Nearly Led M. Night Shyamalan’s Best Movie

If you’re a fan of Shyamalan or his strange superhero franchise that began with Unbreakable, this revelation may not be that surprising.

Over the years, there have been many rumors that Joaquin Phoenix walked away from the lead role in Split, but those rumors have long gone unconfirmed. Now, McAvoy has revealed that those rumors were true and that the Joker star’s impulsive decision to walk away from the film was both a blessing and a curse.

The decision was a blessing in the sense that Joaquin Phoenix’s exit gave James McAvoy the chance to play the role, a part that he would later reprise for Glass, the final film in the trilogy.

The franchise gave McAvoy the chance to prove his acting chops in a spectacular way because his character has 15 very distinct personalities. But Phoenix suddenly leaving was also a bit of a curse because it left McAvoy with only 14 days to get ready to play 15 different characters.

These details came to life via McAvoy’s appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where he also discussed the difficulty of coming into a film to replace such an iconic actor.

At first, he was asked if felt pressure to give the same kind of performance that Joaquin Phoenix would have given throughout Split. This led McAvoy to joke that “I’m confident enough to think I’ll do it better” before praising the man whose shoes he had to suddenly fill.

He said that Joaquin Phoenix is “an amazing actor” and that “he’d give a very different performance to the one I did, but I think he’d give an incredible performance” had he stuck around for Split. This is almost certainly true, as Phoenix has spent a lifetime cultivating a reputation as a consummate character actor.

But he does have a history of being flaky, as he dropped out of Todd Hayne’s gay detective movie only five days before production, effectively killing a movie whose financing required him to be in the cast.

As for James McAvoy, he doesn’t hold a grudge against Joaquin Phoenix for leaving Split because McAvoy knows how to thrive when he’s on a tight timetable.

“Sometimes coming in last minute is the best way,” he said. He claims that he didn’t really regret joining the film at the last minute until he had to do a script read-through for executives like Jason Blum when he was still getting a handle on some of his character’s personalities: “God, I’ve got to do all these 15 characters and be judged by everybody in the room,” McAvoy said.

By now, Joaquin Phoenix has Split firmly in his rearview mirror, as all of his recent energy has gone into making an unpredictably zany sequel to his original Joker film. Joker: Folie à Deux follows the adventures of his titular character as well as Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn as they explore love, death, and romance, one musical number at a time. The soundtrack may be the equivalent of Joker’s own fractured mind, and we can’t wait to see how crazy it is when the film releases on October 4.

Source: Happy Sad Confused